Administered by Greater DEED – Dedicated to preserving the Legacy of Greater Evergreen

The Evergreen Legacy Fund is a program to raise funds to complete improvements and infrastructure in the Greater Evergreen area that improve public safety, improve our mountain lifestyle and support our local businesses. It is administered by the nonprofit corporation Greater DEED. The Greater DEED Board, was established in 2010 and elected by our community business and property owners:

You bet – we’re actually currently working on developing ways for non board members to help on DEED projects, tasks, or anything else that needs some horsepower. Just get in touch with anyone on the board and we can make sure you’re on that list. Thanks!!

I would like to see some sort of specific accounting on ELF, how much has been raised, from which partners, how much has been spent and towards what. Every time I buy something, it seems I am paying an extra fee for…working on trails around the lake? Surely this fund can do more than that. I did read the letter that went out last year. Perhaps the Canyon Courier can do a story?

Hi Janet, thanks for your question. We report on the ELF fund on a semi-regular basis and share the account balance openly. Our next board meeting is later this week, so I don’t have the latest exact information as I write this, but as of the last reporting, the account has grown to over $250,000 over the past five years. Contributions from individual members is strictly confidential, and in fact, our system allows for accountability with anonymity, so I couldn’t provide you that detail if I wanted to, though individual members may share that information on their own if they so choose. The funds are used as leverage for much larger projects such as the elevated lake loop trail and the trails master plan. Our current objective is a river trail on the East end of downtown along Independence Trail/Lower Meadow Drive. As far as how far a dollar can go on projects like this, if you’ve followed any of the EPRD Lake trail reconstruction, they’re looking at trail options that range from $800,000-$3M. So unfortunately, ~$50k per year of growth doesn’t actually go as far as anyone would like. But it’s a heck of a start and it’s garnered the attention of the officials at Jefferson County to both express support as government partner on the river trail project as well as encourage Evergreen to form a LID so many more projects could be accomplished (because every grant requires a government applicant/sponsor). Like all things, it takes time to navigate the process (lake loop elevated trail for example was 4+ years that amounted to literally 1000s of hours of volunteer time). But we’re committed to doing everything we can to make Evergreen a better, safer place for residents and visitors alike. As far as the Courier doing a story, we regularly keep them up to date. They’ve covered DEED projects fairly well as well as ELF from time to time. And most recently, they’ve done a pretty good job covering the LID that we’re working on with Jeffco. It’s ultimately up to them though when to write a story and what to cover, but we’d certainly welcome it.
Thanks!